


Trees Too Tall to Climb

by thisbluespirit



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Backstory, Community: 100_women, Community: allbingo, Community: halfamoon, Gen, Jedi, Mother-Son Relationship, Pre-Canon, Sacrifice, Stewjon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22754398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: She's never been this brave before...
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Obi-Wan Kenobi's Mother
Comments: 16
Kudos: 107
Collections: Allbingo, Focus on Female Characters, Half a Moon: 14 Days of Celebrating Women





	Trees Too Tall to Climb

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Allbingo February Flowers prompt "Rose Leaf - You May Hope", 100_women prompt #52 "mother" and, belatedly, for Halfamoon Day 4 prompt "Legacy."

_She dreams of fire swallowing everything: all the flowers in her garden burn and die._

*

She’s never done anything this brave before, but here she is, determined not to fail. She walks down a dusty, winding lane between green, hilly fields, past neighbouring farms, her son bundled up on her back. She hopes to hitch a ride nearer the city, but she’ll do this even if she has to walk every step of the way. The Jedi are at the spaceport and they won’t be here for much longer.

She met a Jedi once, long ago, when she was only small, curious at lost strangers in the fields, who have wandered out of dreams she’s been having for weeks. She’s never forgotten: _He asks her the way and then knees down and listens to her dreams the way her family never will. “How did we miss this child?” he says, to his companion. “Surely she must have been tested with the rest.”_

Her father’s the reason she wasn’t tested; none of them were. He doesn’t hold with tests, or med-droids, or Jedi, or the nearby space port, even the local school. She’s older now and she knows they’ve grown up penned in by his fear of losing them. And one by one, his fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The rest have left, but she missed her particular chance to fly when the Jedi came and were sent away again. She’s grounded here.

It took longer for the dreams to leave, she remembers. She’d screamed – she’d dreamed of this, she’d dreamed of towers and of gardens and things she didn’t understand and now maybe never would. The loss had cut through her in a way her mother couldn’t fathom. But Father – she recalls it so clearly – faced down the storm in her bedroom, the objects she threw, the window she smashed. She remembers his hand on her arm, bringing her fear back under control: “Breathe in. Breathe out.” And he taught her a mantra to help, speaking calmly, his hand on her arm: _There is no emotion, only peace… no passion, only serenity… no fear…_

She wonders now, where he learnt it, what made him so afraid of them being taken away that his words don’t work for him. So, she stays, and assuages that fear of his, even as she works her garden. She grows gilan (orange petals dancing in the breeze or brightening up a room), and ynah (silver leaves for easing a cough); she plants a qora sapling (its topmost branches will one day stretch past the roof of the house, into the blue sky). She grows food for the table, medicine for the cabinet, blossoms to cheer the heart, and tears out the weeds before they choke the life out of the rest.

Sometimes she dreams of a hundred gardens or more, instead of one, but those dreams are all far away these days. There are only two visions that come now, and both hurt her heart. In one, her garden burns and nothing is left, and she knows, deep down, it’s more than the garden that’s in flames. The other is worse, for it’s about her son.

“They’ll never take any child of mine,” she remembers her father saying, more than once all those years ago, and she hopes he’ll forgive her for this, as the child wakes and tugs at her red hair.

There’s the boy’s father, too. She feels a pang at not telling. He’s a good-hearted boy with a sweet smile, and he’d have stayed if she’d asked, if she’d told him. But he has dreams of flying, too, and she’s glad not to stand in the way of them, not when there’s no call for it. She has what she needs here: her garden, her home and her father to protect and, until now, the boy, with his laughter like sunshine. It’s hard work, but it’s good work. She feels that deep within. The old dreams fade before it. 

She’s known, though, since the boy was born, that she can’t keep him here. He’s meant to have his chance to fly, the way perhaps she should have done. She won’t let him be penned in by fear; she’ll send him to a place where they learn how to banish it. She dreams of him sometimes, growing up far away and it’s tangled up with the burning flowers, and all she knows is what she must do.

But for all the surety she’s felt, that’s easier to say than do now it comes to it. Her heart nearly fails her. She almost turns around and takes him home. Maybe she’s more like her father than she’d thought.

“But this child is too old,” the Jedi says, when she arrives, the boy holding her hand at her side. “Well, not as such,” the Jedi adds at her look. She’s a tall woman with silver-streaked black hair. “But we’d have collected him sooner if anything had showed at the first tests.” She’s half turned her attention away already, resigned weariness in her tone, as if this is something that happens often. “Did you receive a holo message?”

She stands her ground. “He’s never been tested. My father won’t have it. But I knew I had to come. I’ve been dreaming of it ever since he was born.”

Something in the older woman’s face changes, and she moves across. She waits for permission to take the child, smiling at him first before she picks him up, and stilling his immediate protest with a touch. She sits him on the medical bench, passing over a silver-coloured ball to distract him. “I’ll run the usual tests, but I have a strong feeling you are right.”

“I had to,” she says, clutching her coat tight in against herself now that she doesn’t have her son to hold. It is right, she’s sure of it, but it’s also worse than she imagined, and all it feels now the moment is here, is wrong. _Breathe in, breathe out._ She closes her eyes and won’t cry, won’t disturb the boy, who seems to pick up on her emotions so quickly.

The Jedi is kind; she explains what she’s doing as she works, and when she looks across again, she asks if she needs more time with the boy. She planned to leave tonight, the Jedi tells her, but she’s sure she can stay a day or two more if that helps. She can wait till the Jedi visit next if she hasn’t decided yet.

But she knows the last moment will be as bad whether it’s now or tomorrow; next week or next year, and probably worse for them both, the longer it takes. She shakes her head at the offer – she _will_ be brave – and only wants to know what they do with the children, where they take them.

“He’ll be well cared for,” the Jedi says, and pats her arm. “I promise.”

She nods. She’ll change her mind if she waits. She must do it now, do it quickly – let it be over. The Jedi seems to understand, only waiting near in concern as she crosses to bid her son goodbye, pressing a kiss against his forehead and holding his hands, as he screws up his face.

“May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan,” she says, and with every ounce of strength she has, she makes herself be happy for it, unwilling to make him start crying at her pain, though she knows there will be tears for them both. Some things can’t be avoided, no matter how many dreams you have.

When she goes home, the house is so very quiet. It’s emptier and darker than before, and it takes a month and more before her father will speak to her again, but the living Force is everywhere in her garden as it always has been, and though the dreams still come, it’s different now: the fire burns on, but it doesn’t swallow everything. Not all the flowers die.


End file.
